Wednesday 18 May 2011

L.A. Noire


Seeing as the L.A. Noire hype is in full swing now, I've been re-watching some videos and reading up on some details on what is included in Rockstar's new title. One of the features that keeps on impressing me is the attention to detail on the facial expressions of the characters; it's mind blowing! So, I dug a little deeper to get some information for all of you who aren't quite sure on how they do it.


The method of creating the facial expressions for the characters isn't like any other methods that have been used before; this is the first time that something like this has been done for a big title release in the videogame industry. It uses Depth Analysis's newly developed technology called MotionScan. MotionScan uses 32 High Definition cameras which surrounds an actor/actress, and the cameras capture the facial expressions from every angle possible, to create a realistic looking in-game character without the use of animation; it's pretty damn cool, and the results are phenomenal. You can read more about MotionScan here.

Now that this technology is available for videogames, more and more developers will hopefully follow in L.A. Noire's footsteps, and integrate this into their own games. This will then give us gamers convincing looking characters as well as the already-achievable (but not always achieved) convincing voice acting.
The future for videogames is looking very bright indeed.


Article first published as L.A. Noire's Motion Capture Technology on Blogcritics, by Jay Blundell.



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